Abstract

In the last years, the number of working poor has substantially increased in self-employment. A polarization between genuine self-employed workers, with high annual income, and weak self-employed, with low annual income, has been observed. In this framework, the need to find new forms of collective representation has led to the development of new self-employed workers organizations, striving to provide adequate responses to increasing social and economic disparities. After an analysis of self-employed workers organizations, the paper focuses on collective action for the self-employed that can take three different forms: political and legislative, through lobbying, social alliances, and other institutional activities; economic, through the use of coercive measures such as strikes and collective bargaining; judiciary, through legal claims filed by the unions or by individual workers supported by the unions.